Daughter's Death Prompts Fight on 'Date Rape' Drug

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Students from the Oscar Carlson High School here say that when they go to parties these days, they try to keep an eye on their drinks at all times, put caps back on bottled beverages between sips and never accept a cup from someone they do not know.

The precautions follow the death last January of Samantha Reid, a 15-year-old freshman who drank a glass of Mountain Dew laced with GHB, an increasingly popular recreational and ''date rape'' drug that is colorless, odorless and virtually tasteless. Samantha's death, one of 49 linked to the drug nationwide since 1990, has galvanized an effort to crack down on GHB, gamma hydroxybutyrate.

Two Michigan Republicans, Representative Fred Upton and Senator Spencer Abraham, have sponsored bills in the House and Senate that would add GHB to the Federal Government's list of the most-controlled substances, joining heroin and LSD as a so-called Schedule 1 drug. The House passed its bill on Tuesday by a vote of 423 to 1 with little debate. The Senate bill, introduced two months ago, is in committee but is also expected to win passage. The bills would make GHB trafficking punishable by a sentence of five years to life in prison.

The bills would ban not only GHB but also similar chemical compounds, including some dietary supplements for body builders that can be used to make the drug. GHB ''is easily synthesized by a lot of people who can get the recipe off the Internet,'' said Dr. Felix Adatsi, the chief toxicologist of the Michigan State Police. ''It can be made in a kitchen.''

Small quantities of the drug produce a temporary euphoria or sometimes hallucinations, while slightly larger quantities produce lassitude, unconsciousness or even respiratory failure and death. The drug can be lethal in even tiny doses, or if poorly prepared. Doctors recommend that a person rendered unconscious by GHB receive immediate care by an ambulance crew or emergency room doctors who have been told to suspect the drug's presence.

Samantha was an average student who loved to play basketball at Carlson High in this small factory town on the southern outskirts of Detroit. She encountered the drug on a Saturday night when her mother thought she was at a movie. Instead, Samantha and two other freshman girls joined four young men, two of whom were seniors at Carlson, and went to the apartment of one of the men to watch rented videos.

Her mother, Judi Clark, was summoned in the middle of the night to the local hospital, where she found her daughter dead.

''I fell asleep on the couch and was woken up by the phone at 3 or 3:30,'' said Ms. Clark, who resumed using her maiden name after her divorce from Samantha's father in 1986. Ms. Clark reared Samantha and Samantha's older brother, Charles, now 18.

Douglas M. Baker, the Wayne County deputy chief prosecutor for drug crimes, said that one of the young men at the party with Samantha, Joshua Cole, 19, later told the police that he had secretly put GHB into all three girls' drinks to make the party more ''lively.'' Mr. Cole also told the police that two of the other three young men had agreed to the plan and helped carry the drinks to the girls, Mr. Baker said.

Samantha died a few hours later. One of her friends went into a coma but was revived. The third girl never touched her drink. All four men, ranging in age now from 18 to 26, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter and poisoning, and, if convicted, could be sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Cole and the other three young men have pleaded not guilty. Lawyers for the other three young men have contended that Mr. Cole was solely responsible for the death. Mr. Cole has denied this.

Ms. Clark has turned her daughter's death into a crusade for limits on GHB. She took six months off from her job as a unionized construction worker after Samantha's death to study the drug and write letters to politicians seeking controls on it.

Ms. Clark has not touched her daughter's room. Samantha had strewn clothes on her bed and floor in choosing what to wear when she went out on the night she died. The clothes are still there. So are the black lava lamp, the white strobe lamp, the posters of Leonardo DiCaprio and the movie ''Titanic,'' the herd of stuffed animals and the piles of teen-age magazines.

''I haven't even dusted,'' Ms. Clark said. ''It's just like the night she left, except more dust.''

Michigan is not alone in having a GHB problem. The use of the drug has been spreading in New York, California, Florida, Pennsylvania and other states. According to the Drug Enforcement Administration, hospitals and law-enforcement officials have reported at least 5,500 cases of GHB abuse in 42 states, in addition to the 49 deaths, 5 of which occurred in Michigan.

Yet no one is certain of the true extent of the problem. Because GHB is not yet on the Federal list of controlled substances, the Drug Enforcement Administration does not actively pursue cases involving it, said E. David Jacobson, an agency spokesman. The agency has helped with local investigations in some of the 29 states where the drug is a controlled substance, including Michigan.

GHB breaks down quickly in the body and is extremely difficult for laboratories to detect even before it breaks down. Only four laboratories in the country even have the equipment to detect GHB, and they can do so only if a blood or urine sample is gathered within a few hours after the drug is ingested, Dr. Adatsi said.

Because kits for making GHB are illegal in Michigan but legal in many other states, the state attorney general's office reached across state lines to combat it. The office bought kits over the Internet from two vendors in Florida and Colorado last summer, then filed criminal charges against the two men and extradited them for trial here. They have pleaded not guilty.

GHB prosecutions are ''an extremely high priority, in that this substance has popped up at these rave parties, and kids can't detect it in a drink,'' said Jennifer M. Granholm, Michigan's Attorney General. Ms. Granholm added that she planned to speak on the subject when the nation's state attorneys general gather in January for a conference on Internet-related crimes.

Gamma hydroxybutyrate is a highly addictive chemical compound that depresses the central nervous system. Toxicologists say that in precise quantities, with the ingredients prepared in carefully measured ratios, GHB produces a mild euphoria followed by sleep, with no hangover.

But GHB is seldom prepared with clinical care or administered in precise amounts. Kitchen chemists use extremely caustic liquids like paint remover, furniture polish remover or drain clearing agents to prepare the drug, which, when poorly mixed, can cause severe chemical burns to a user's throat. The drug is also such a powerful sedative that an error in dosage of a tiny fraction of a gram can cause a coma and eventually death.

Because GHB can render someone unconscious or unable to remember what happens next, the drug has been used for several years by sexual predators across the country, who put it in women's drinks, Mr. Jacobson said. But more recently, young people have been taking the drug more often for the euphoria it can produce, and in the mistaken belief among men that it builds muscles, toxicologists say.

There is no evidence of sexual misconduct in the Samantha Reid case, Mr. Baker said. Her death now appears to have been an early warning for the state, because overdoses have become more frequent since. Eight people overdosed on GHB in one weekend three weeks ago in Ann Arbor. While some overdoses since Samantha's have produced temporary comas, none nave been fatal.

While Ms. Clark has returned to work, installing heating ducts in new office buildings and factories, she continues her fight against GHB in the evenings.

''I'm trying as hard as I can to make some purpose out of my daughter's death,'' Ms. Clark said. ''She can't die without a purpose, or I'd go out of my mind.''

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